Best Plays in Manhattan

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important.

SERIOUS

THE LETTER--Katharine Cornell shoots a lover and tells why.

COQUETTE--Love turns to rend a flirt. Helen Hayes' best performance.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM-- Shakespeare in a scintillating synthesis of music and ballet. In German,

CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE--Eva Le Gallienne's troupe in a shifting bill of sound plays, soundly played.

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE--Walter Hampden keeping green the memory of Ibsen.

PORGY--A crippled Negro's love along the docks of Charleston.

MELODRAMA THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN--A court room in which the world may sit in judgment on beauty and the beast.

INTERFERENCE--In which a girl is given prussic acid as an antidote for blackmail.

THE RACKET--Chicago shoots to kill.

THE SPIDER--A murder web spun by a magician.

BROADWAY--Light hearts, low minds, two murders in Manhattan after midnight.

FUNNY

THE SHANNONS OF BROADWAY--The wide awake wanderings of vaudeville vagrants in a small town.

THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA--Bernard Shaw belabors medical men with the aid of our efficient Theatre Guild.

THE COMMAND TO LOVE--Recently fumigated by official request, but still the story of European diplomacy winning immoral victories.

THE ROAD TO ROME--Hannibal, general of Carthage, is destroyed by the noblest Roman woman of them all.

BURLESQUE:--Hearts broken and mended on the burlesque wheel.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW--Basil Sydney and Mary Ellis bring Shakespeare boisterously up to date.

MUSICAL

Lighter moments are agreeably numerous in The Mikado, Manhattan Mary, Good News, Chauce-Soucis, Hit the Deck, A Connecticut Yankee, Funny Face.